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As with so much of scholarly communication these days, an interesting conversation has played out on twitter this week. It all started with a fantastic idea for authors to retain copyright from Prof. Lorena A. Barba, a professor in Mechanical Engineering at Boston University.

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Idea: upload figures to @figshare under CC-BY and add citation to my own figures in my own paper before submitting so journal can't own them

\n— Lorena Barba (@LorenaABarba) March 14, 2012

This was heavily retweeted, so it seems that lots of researchers object to handing over their copyright to publishers. Some however pointed out potential flaws in this process:

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@JosephJEsposito @figshare If a journal declines to publish a manuscript just because the figures are CC-BY, lesson is never submit there

\n— Lorena Barba (@LorenaABarba) March 14, 2012

This is a fantastic point. We can, as researchers control the rights to our research.This has been something that some of the world's leading Universities have begun to insist on, with Harvard taking the stand in 2008 and Princeton recently following suit:

\"Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers\"

But what about the Ingelfinger Rule. For those who don't know, the Ingelfinger rule stipulates that a scientist may not publish the same original research in two different outlets. It was created in 1969 by Franz J. Ingelfinger, who at the time was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), as an effort to prevent NEJM from losing originality. It has also been suggested that `that the real reason for the Ingelfinger rule is to protect the journals' revenue stream`.

When talking to researchers about making their research outputs available of figshare and the benefits of sharing their research in this way, both personal and for the good of science, a common response is that they are scared of compromising a future publication by having parts of the work already on the web. This is a common misconception and a great fear amongst postdocs who live in fear of making a mistake which may harm their career prospects. This, ironically is the uneducated view.

A great source of information on the current state of publisher's opinions on the Ingelfinger rule comes from F1000. Their soon to be launched, innovative journal F1000 research has a page dedicated to it. Included here is a list from that page of journals and publishers that have confirmed that they would not view publication of datasets with a DOI and associated protocol information as prior publication.

BMC journals

BMJ Group journals

Elsevier journals

IOS Press journals

The Lancet journals

Nature-titled journals

PLoS journals

RSC journals

SAGE journals

Adv Clin Neurosci Rehabil

Bioinformatics

Cardiovasc Ther

Ecol Lett

Eur J Neurosci

Int J Obstet Anesth

J Clin Invest

J Eat Disord

J Neurol

J Neurosci

J Pain

J Plant Ecol

Neurourol Urodyn

New Engl J Med

Proc Natl Acad Sci USA

PROTEOMICS J

Science

Respondents that would see the publication of data with a DOI and protocol information as potential prior publication:

Cell Press journals

Ann Oncol

As can be seen from this list of responders, the overwhelming majority support this. So it is not I am going to publish in Annals of Oncology because there are no more prestigious journals who will accept my research. So why do they insist on it? To improve their sales? I doubt the nature preprint service nature preceedings has harmed the profits of nature (if I am wrong about this, please correct me).

So to sum up, the tide is turning - the majority of publishers now ignore the ingelfinger rule. Innovative journals such as PLoS are embracing new technologies as opposed to putting up barriers to research. Rather than protecting their profits, it seems to me that the publishers who maintain these barriers to research will be those that pay the ultimate price. The forward thinking, innovative publishers who continually work with the needs of researchers will be the ones who turn their current, threatened business model into the business model that can be successful for the next 300 years.

Prof. Barba has continued to show how her innovative thinking is bringing her success. Here's hoping that many more PI's continue to educate their students and postdocs that the scope of scholarly publishing is changing, there are new ways to get credit for your research and with everything, it is the early adopters who will reap the greatest benefit!

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I uploaded 3 figures to @figshare 2 days ago, and already have >500 views. A sign of increased impact via #openscience? figshare.com/authors/Lorena…

\n— Lorena Barba (@LorenaABarba) March 19, 2012